Don't Get Caught Blog Tour: Excerpt + Giveaway

When
Max receives a mysterious invite from the untraceable, epic
prank-pulling Chaos Club, he has to ask: why him? After all, he’s Mr.
2.5 GPA, Mr. No Social Life. He’s Just Max. And his favorite heist
movies have taught him this situation calls for Rule #4:
Be suspicious. But it’s also his one shot to leave Just Max in the dust…

Yeah,
not so much. Max and four fellow students—who also received invites—are
standing on the newly defaced water tower when campus security
“catches” them. Definitely a setup. And this time, Max has had enough.
It’s time for Rule #7:
Always get payback.

Let the prank war begin.

Oceans 11 meets
The Breakfast Club in this entertaining, fast-paced debut filled
with pranks and cons that will keep readers on their toes, never sure
who’s pulling the strings or what’s coming next.

Praise for Don’t Get Caught:

“Don’t Get Caught is just everything I love about young adult fiction. It's funny and awkward and
exciting and full of revelations and surprises.” -Josh Berk, author of The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin

"Not only is Don't Get Caught the
best kind of underdog story---heartfelt and hilarious---but it's
filled with genuine surprises up until the very last page, which
features one of my favorite endings in recent memory. I'm highly
inspired to prank someone right now." -Lance Rubin, author of Denton Little's Deathdate

“Genre-savvy, clever, and full of "Heist Rules" like "If questioned, be evasive" and "Play to your crew's
strengths," this twisty tale is funny, fast-paced, and full of surprises. –Publishers Weekly

“This caper comedy about an Ocean's 11-style group of high school masterminds will keep readers guessing.”
–Kirkus

“Teen readers will delight in the way such totally different individuals begin to cooperate to triumph
over their wrongs.” –VOYA Magazine

Ellie calls it Operation Stranko Caper and gives each member of the Water Tower Five code names related to his or her role.

Adleta is Goon.

Malone is Shadow.

Wheeler is Potatoes.

Ellie is Crybaby.

And I’m Bleeder.

But
at the moment, waiting for zero hour while standing in the back hallway
where I can view the filled cafeteria, I’m feeling more like Puker
because I want to sprint to the bathroom to vomit up my guts.

And to think this was all my idea. Here’s Heist Planning 101:

1. Identify
your target. In this case, the target is Stranko’s phone. Clearly he’s
investigating the Chaos Club; the pictures he took in the office prove
that. Who knows what other evidence against them he might have?

2. Formulate a plan. It took a week of observing Stranko during school (all of us) and after (thank you, Adleta)
to
realize he’s most separated from his phone during lunch duty. It sits
on a table on the stage next to where Stranko polices the cafeteria.
Now, if he were to
be pulled away from the stage...

3. Practice, practice, practice. The five of us rehearsed our roles for
over a week. The plan isn’t the most complicated, but we only have one
shot at Stranko’s phone.

Our
final run-through of the plan lasted two hours on Saturday, with Ellie
and Wheeler the most excited. Even Adleta, who’s probably risking
at least a thousand push-ups every day for the rest of his life, liked
the idea. Malone, go figure, predicted failure.

“It won’t work,” she said. “Maybe in a movie, yes, but not in real life it won’t.”

“No,
they won’t see it coming,” I said. “No one expects things like this to
happen, and especially not from us. We’re trying to stay out of
trouble, remember? Why would we risk getting suspended?”

“Max is right,” Adleta said. “There’ll be too much going on for Stranko to realize what’s happened. It’s going to work.”

“What if we get caught?”

“Then we do what you should do whenever you get busted,” Wheeler said. “We lie our asses off.”

I
don’t mind Malone’s concerns. In fact, I appreciate them. The more I’m
around her, the more I depend on her skepticism. Every heist crew
needs someone to point out the weaknesses in a plan. Malone’s perfect
for that. She’s also tech savvy, a brilliant artist, and athletic as
hell. A jack-of-all-trades, really. Or more like a jill-of-all-trades.

A
heist can go wrong for any number of reasons, the worst of which is the
double cross. You can just never be sure if everyone is really on
your side or if they’re working an angle. I don’t necessarily think
anyone in my crew is behind the setup at the water tower, but the hint
of doubt is there. Still, why would someone set us up to get busted and
include him or herself in the busting? It makes
no sense.

We
picked Monday for our heist because that’s the school day where
everyone, even the administration, just slogs through until the final
bell.
At the time I was excited, but now it’s nausea city. Reality sucks that
way. But I’m not going to back down and hide in the theater again like I
did the day after the water tower. Not that I could put a stop to our
plan if I wanted to. Everyone’s in position.
The pin’s pulled and the grenade heaved. All I can do is try not to get
my head blown off.

On
stage, Stranko reads something on his phone, then places it on the
table beside him before returning to his surveillance. In a lot of ways,
thinking of him as a prison guard is dead-on. The entire building is a
prison, with the staff as guards, students as prisoners, and rules that
dictate when we can stand up and leave, talk, and even go the to the
bathroom. The school even has security cameras,
which are positioned in all corners of the cafeteria. I’ve seen the
room with the video monitors though and am not as worried as I might be
in a newer school. The monitors here are in black and white and the
images almost blurry, like it may be the first security
system ever created, maybe used back in the Garden of Eden where God
watched a grainy image of Eve heisting that apple.

Then,
right on cue at 11:45, Crybaby, sitting at her usual table near the
front of the cafeteria, pushes her tray aside and puts her head down
in her arms.

Step One, the Split, has begun.

Kurt
Dinan has taught high school English for over twenty-one years, and
while he’s never pulled any of the pranks detailed in this novel, he was
once almost arrested in college
for blizzarding the campus with fliers promoting a fake concert. He
lives and works in the suburbs of Cincinnati with his wife and his four
children he affectionately refers to as “the Crime Spree.”
Don’t Get Caught is his first novel.